VIOLET
151 days till graduation
Three thirty. School parking lot.
I stand in the sun, shading my eyes. At first I don’t see him. Maybe he left without me. Or maybe I went out the wrong door. Our town is small but our school is large. We have over two thousand students because we’re the only high school for miles. He could be anywhere.
I am holding on to the handles of my bike, an old orange ten-speed inherited from Eleanor. She named it Leroy because she liked being able to say to our parents, “I was out riding Leroy,” and “I’m just going to ride Leroy for a while.”
Brenda Shank-Kravitz stalks by, a bright-pink storm cloud. Charlie Donahue saunters behind. “He’s over there,” Brenda says. She points a blue-nailed finger at me. “If you break his heart, I will kick that skinny ass all the way to Kentucky. I mean it. The last thing he needs is you playing with his head. Understood?”
“Understood.”
“And I’m sorry. You know. About your sister.”
I look in the direction Brenda pointed and there he is. Theodore Finch leans against an SUV, hands in pockets, like he has all the time in the world and he expects me. I think of the Virginia Woolf lines, the ones from The Waves: “Pale, with dark hair, the one who is coming is melancholy, romantic. And I am arch and fluent and capricious; for he is melancholy, he is romantic. He is here.”
I wheel the bike over to him. His dark hair is kind of wild and messy like he’s been at the beach, even though there’s no beach in Bartlett, and shines blue-black in the light. His pale skin is so white, I can see the veins in his arms.
He opens the passenger door to his car. “After you.”
“I told you no driving.”
“I forgot my bike, so we’ll have to go to my house and get it.”
“Then I’ll follow you.”
He drives slower than he needs to, and ten minutes later we reach his house. It’s a two-story brick colonial with shrubs crowding under the windows, black shutters, and a red door. There’s a matching red mailbox that says FINCH. I wait in the driveway while he sorts through the mess of a garage, searching for a bicycle. Finally he lifts it up and out, and I watch the muscles in his arms flex.
“You can leave your bag in my room.” He’s wiping the dust off the bike seat with his shirt.
“But my stuff’s in there.…” A book on the history of Indiana, checked out from the library after last period, and plastic bags of various sizes—courtesy of one of the lunch ladies—for any souvenirs we might collect.
“I’ve got it covered.” He unlocks the door and holds it open for me. Inside, it looks like a regular, ordinary house, not one I’d expect Theodore Finch to live in. I follow him upstairs. The walls are lined with framed school photos. Finch in kindergarten. Finch in middle school. He looks different every year, not just agewise but personwise. Class-clown Finch. Awkward Finch. Cocky Finch. Jock Finch. At the end of the hall, he pushes open a door.
The walls are a dark, deep red, and everything else is black—desk, chair, bookcase, bedspread, guitars. One entire wall is covered in pictures and Post-it notes and napkins and torn pieces of paper. On the other walls there are concert posters and a large black-and-white photo of him onstage somewhere, guitar in hand.
I stand in front of the wall of notes and say, “What’s all this?”
“Plans,” he says. “Songs. Ideas. Visions.” He throws my bag onto his bed and digs something out of a drawer.
Most look like fragments of things, single words or phrases that don’t make sense on their own: Night flowers. I do it so it feels real. Let us fall. My decision totally. Obelisk. Is today a good day to?
Is today a good day to what? I want to ask. But instead I say, “Obelisk?”
“It’s my favorite word.”
“Really?”
“One of them, at least. Look at it.” I look. “That is one straight-up, upstanding, powerful word. Unique, original, and kind of stealthy because it doesn’t really sound like what it is. It’s a word that surprises you and makes you think, Oh. All right then. It commands respect, but it’s also modest. Not like ‘monument’ or ‘tower.’ ” He shakes his head. “Pretentious bastards.”
I don’t say anything because I used to love words. I loved them and was good at arranging them. Because of this, I felt protective of all the best ones. But now all of them, good and bad, frustrate me.
He says, “Have you ever heard the phrase ‘get back on the camel’ before?”
“Not until Mr. Black used it.”
He leans over his desk, tears a piece of paper in half, and writes it down. He slaps it on the wall as we leave.
Outside, I climb onto Leroy, resting one foot on the ground. Theodore Finch pulls on a backpack, his T-shirt riding up across his stomach where an ugly red scar cuts across the middle.
I push Eleanor’s glasses up onto my head. “Where did you get the scar?”
“I drew it on. It’s been my experience that girls like scars even better than tattoos.” He straddles the bike, resting back on the seat, both feet firmly planted. “Have you been in a car since the accident?”
“No.”
“That’s gotta be some sort of record. We’re talking, what, eight, nine months? How do you get to school?”
“I ride my bike or walk. We don’t live that far.”
“What about when it rains or snows?”
“I ride my bike or walk.”
“So you’re afraid to ride in a car but you’ll climb up on a bell tower ledge?”
“I’m going home.”
He laughs and reaches out for my bike, holding on to it before I can take off. “I won’t bring it up again.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Look, you’re already here, and we’re already committed to this project, so the way I see it, the faster we get to Hoosier Hill, the faster you get this over with.”